The grand dining hall momentarily held its breath as Olenna's decree echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Mace looked caught between terror at his mother's brazen command and absolute dread at the thought of his brother-in-law, Paxter, sailing a war fleet up the Mander to reclaim his heir.
Before Mace could stammer out a weak protest, Mina set her silver wine cup down. The soft clink drew every eye to her.
"You flatter him, Grandmother, and you flatter me," Mina said, her voice smooth, melodious, and carrying the unmistakable, velvet-wrapped steel of a true Tyrell woman. "But Paxter is not a man who makes empty threats. If you keep his heir from him indefinitely, he will not just whine. He will blockade the Mander, halt the wine shipments to King's Landing, and make a terribly tedious mess of our trade routes. We both know the Crown cannot afford to have the Arbor and Highgarden bickering."
Olenna waved a dismissive, gnarled hand. "Let him blockade. What is he going to do, throw grapes at the walls? The boy's mind is wasted counting shipping crates when he should be learning how to move armies and kings."
"He can learn both," Mina countered effortlessly, holding the Queen of Thorns' gaze without flinching. She loved her grandmother, but she fiercely protected her own nest. "A mind like his needs a vast canvas. Let us make a pact, Grandmother. Six moons here in Highgarden, learning statecraft at your side. And six moons at the Arbor, learning naval command and trade at his father's. A perfect balance of the rose and the vine."
Olenna's eyes narrowed into dark slits. She was not a woman accustomed to compromising, especially when she had just found a mind that could finally keep pace with her own. She opened her mouth to shoot down the offer, prepared to verbally dismantle Mina's logic.
But before she could speak, Olenna's gaze flicked to the ten-year-old sitting quietly across the table.
Orion had not said a word. He was simply cutting a small piece of cheese. But as Olenna looked at him, Orion met her eyes and gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
It was a microscopic gesture, invisible to Mace, Alerie, or the younger children. But to Olenna, it spoke volumes.
Inside his Absolute Mind, Orion had already calculated the optimal logistical pathway for his grand strategy. He needed the Arbor. He needed the shipyards to build his galleons, the glassworks to fund his treasury, and the physical isolation to safely develop his newfound 'Green Magic' away from the prying eyes of the Citadel. But he also needed Highgarden. He needed the agricultural might of the Reach and Olenna's intricate spiderweb of spies and political leverage in the capital. A six-month rotation was not a compromise; it was the perfect synchronization of his dual empires.
Olenna read the quiet calculation in the boy's eyes. She realized instantly that this wasn't just Mina negotiating—this was Orion silently telling her that this was the arrangement he desired.
And Olenna Tyrell was wise enough to know that you do not cage a creature that possesses a mind like that. You give him exactly enough slack on the leash to make him think he isn't wearing one at all. Pushing too hard would only alienate the boy and anger the Redwyne fleet.
The fierce, combative tension drained from Olenna's shoulders. She picked up her wine cup, a sly, deeply amused smile returning to her wrinkled face.
"Six moons," Olenna declared, her raspy voice echoing with finality. She pointed her silver spoon at Mina. "Very well. You may tell your stubborn husband that he gets to keep his ledger-boy for half the year. But for the other half, he belongs to Highgarden."
Mace let out a massive, highly visible sigh of relief, slumping slightly in his heavy wooden chair. "A brilliant compromise, Mother. Truly. The best of both worlds! I shall draft a raven to Paxter in the morning."
"You will do no such thing, Mace, you'll make it sound like an apology," Olenna snapped, though she was in far too good a mood to truly scold him. "Mina will write it. Paxter only listens to her anyway."
Willas, seated beside Orion, leaned in slightly. "It seems you are to become a fixture here, Cousin," he murmured, his dark eyes bright with genuine pleasure. "I will have to make sure the library is well-stocked for your return."
"I look forward to it, Willas," Orion replied softly.
"Good," Olenna said, pushing her plate away. She looked directly at Orion, her glittering eyes entirely devoid of the grandmotherly facade. "Enjoy your roasted fowl, Orion. Because starting tomorrow, you and I are going to sit in my gardens, and we are going to draft a proper economic blockade of Brightwater Keep. If the Florents want to whisper about their green blood, we are going to see how green they look when they can't afford to buy salt."
Mina hid a proud, knowing smile behind her wine cup. Her ten-year-old son hadn't just survived the Queen of Thorns; he had effortlessly negotiated a dual-residency, retained his father's legacy, and secured his place as the second-most powerful voice in the Reach, all without raising his voice once.
Orion took a calm sip of his watered wine. The board was set. The pieces were moving. And the absolute peak of human evolution was finally ready to play the game of thrones.
The morning sun bathed Highgarden in a warm, golden glow, but inside the solar overlooking the Mander, the air was thick with the scent of hot wax and drying ink.
Lord Mace Tyrell was currently in the lower courtyards, loudly admiring a newly purchased destrier and planning a hawking trip. But the true machinery of the Reach—the taxes, the harvest reports, the border disputes with the Dornish marches—rested entirely on the desk of a teenager with a crippled leg.
Willas Tyrell sat surrounded by towering stacks of parchment, rubbing his tired eyes. He had been awake since before dawn. Being the heir to Highgarden was a title; actually ruling it was an exhaustion.
The heavy oak door creaked open, and ten-year-old Orion slipped inside.
"I heard Uncle Mace declaring that the day was too beautiful for indoor gloom," Orion said lightly, pulling up a stool opposite his cousin. "I assumed that meant you were doing all the actual work."
Willas let out a soft, wry chuckle, leaning back in his chair and resting a hand on his polished cane. "My father is a man of grand visions, Orion. He sees the tapestry. It simply falls to me to weave the threads. And right now, the threads are tangling."
Orion looked at the sprawling map of the Reach spread across the desk. It was covered in small wooden markers representing grain shipments, apple harvests, and toll stations. "What is the problem?"
"Mud and rot," Willas sighed, pointing to a long, winding line that represented the Roseroad. "The Reach is the breadbasket of the world. We grow more food than we can eat. But every autumn, the heavy rains come. The Roseroad turns into a swamp. Wagons break their axles, horses drown in the mud, and by the time the grain reaches King's Landing, a tenth of it has rotted from the damp. We lose tens of thousands of dragons simply because we cannot move the harvest fast enough."
Inside Orion's Absolute Mind, the solution generated in less than a microsecond. The Reach was operating on a rudimentary medieval supply chain. It needed Roman engineering and a basic commodities market.
"Why fight the mud, Cousin?" Orion asked, picking up a wooden marker shaped like a wheat sheaf and rolling it between his fingers. "The Arbor builds ships to sail over the water. Why not build a road that the water sails under?"
Willas frowned, intrigued. "A raised road? The cost of paving the entire Roseroad in cut stone would bankrupt us."
"Not cut stone," Orion explained, drawing on ancient Earth engineering but translating it perfectly for a Westerosi mind. "You don't need flat paving stones. You just need a ditch. You dig a deep trench along the worst parts of the road. You fill the bottom with large, heavy rocks. Then a layer of smaller stones on top of that, and finally, packed gravel and sand at the very surface. We slope it slightly from the center to the edges."
Willas leaned forward, his intelligent eyes rapidly tracing the mechanics of the idea.
"When the autumn rains come," Orion continued softly, his terrifying charisma making the concept crystal clear, "the water won't sit on the dirt and make mud. It will seep right through the gravel, down through the stones, and drain away into the earth. The surface stays hard. A wagon that takes three weeks to reach the capital in the autumn could do it in ten days. You wouldn't need to pave the whole road, Willas. Just the valleys and the lowlands where the mud pools."
Willas stared at the map. He could almost see the wagons moving freely, the trade flowing without interruption. "A draining road... By the Seven, it is so simple. The stone masons would call it madness at first, but the physics are sound."
"And as for the rot," Orion added, placing the wooden wheat sheaf at a junction near Bitterbridge. "Why move it all at once? If we know the King's Landing merchants will need grain in the winter, why send it in the damp autumn?"
"Because if we keep it in the lords' wooden barns, the rats and the damp get to it anyway," Willas explained patiently.
"Then we build stone silos," Orion said. "Massive, circular towers made of solid stone, sealed with mortar so no rat or drop of rain can enter. We build them at key points—Bitterbridge, Tumbleton, Ashford. Instead of every minor lord struggling to transport his own grain, Highgarden offers to store it for them in these impenetrable towers."
Orion leaned in slightly, introducing the concept of a futures market disguised as feudal favor. "And here is the best part, Cousin. The merchants in King's Landing don't buy the physical grain in the autumn. They buy a piece of parchment with the Tyrell seal on it, guaranteeing them a set amount of grain in the winter. We sell the promise of the food. When winter comes, they present the parchment, and we release the grain from the stone towers."
Willas sat perfectly still. The sheer, devastating brilliance of the administrative overhaul washed over him.
If Highgarden built these central storage towers, every lesser lord in the Reach would willingly hand over their harvests for safekeeping. House Tyrell would physically control the entire kingdom's food supply. They could dictate the prices, ensure nothing rotted, and sell the grain on parchment before it even moved an inch. It was absolute economic dominance, masked as a generous public service.
"You..." Willas breathed, looking at his ten-year-old cousin with a mixture of profound awe and slight disbelief. "You just solved a century of logistical nightmares with gravel and parchment."
"I just look at how things move, Willas," Orion smiled, a bright, unassuming expression. "The Arbor is a small island; we have to be efficient. The Reach is so large, people forget that a large body still needs a strong spine to hold it up."
Willas slowly reached for a fresh roll of parchment and dipped his quill into the inkwell. The weariness had completely vanished from his face, replaced by the crackling energy of a man who had just been handed the keys to the kingdom.
"I am drafting the orders to the stone masons at Bitterbridge today," Willas declared, his quill scratching furiously against the page. "And I will have the maester begin drawing up the designs for these... silos. Grandmother was right about you, Orion."
Willas paused, looking up with a warm, deeply respectful smile. "The rose and the vine. With you at the Arbor and me in Highgarden... the rest of Westeros won't even realize we own them until they're paying us for the privilege."